What will become of 137 families?
February, 2010

Dear friends,

During this month, CPT has visited the IDP camp, and various village leaders numerous times. At the present time, there are 4 (out of 132) families living in the tent camp. The conditions are pretty miserable. First, they are still in tents. The weather is damp and rainy. The temperature has dropped below zero a few nights this month. They have one more month of cold and rain to get through before the season changes. The last time I visited them, I left them in the snow inside a cold and windy tent. They were shivering and crying and so was I. One mom was holding her 2 year old who didn't even have socks on her feet. Short of doing a sit-in in one of their God forsaken government offices to get them some emergency subsistance, I don't know what to do.

The US military authorized payment for digging a well at the camp. The work began back in July. As of early January, the well was still not operational. They were waiting for a pump. UNHCR extended water delivery until the end of 2009. After that, they were left to buy their own water. Last week, the pump was finally installed. The generator was installed during the fall of 2009 but the government does not supply them with enough benzene to run it. Again, they are left to buy benzene themselves.

Of the 4 remaining families at the camp, CPT knows of at least one family who has divided themselves up into 3 different places. Some family members remain at the camp, the younger children live in town so they can attend school, and some of them are in the village. This causes great psychological problems for the family..

The majority of the families live in Zharawa town. They are doubled and tripled up in houses with relatives. There can be up to 15 people living in one room. There is no work in the town of Zharawa. Some people are able to find day labor in Hawler (the capital city of the KRG). Most sit in despair and depression.

Of the 11 villages that these 132 families were forced out of, 2 remain completely abandoned by the villagers. There are rumors that these 2 villages are now inhabited by PKK members. 7 villages are inhabited by a few adult men who try to salvage what is left of their homes and livelihoods. Finally, 2 villages are occupied by whole families but only 1 village has a functioning school for the children.

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the villagers are caught in a horrific political and deadly web.

They are not PKK rebels. They are not involved in any fighting. They are farmers, shepherds, beekeepers and orchard growers. They are keepers of a traditional way of life that will be lost if they cannot get back to their lives on the land.

So where do things stand now? As internally displaced people (IDPs), they are not entitled to the same provisions and services from UNHCR as refugees. They are more dependent on their government to protect and provide for them. The problem with protection is that the KRG is only a regional government. It is not a national government. The KRG is part of the larger Iraqi government. There are deep political problems between the KRG and the central Iraqi government. In addition, the KRG is divided into 2 main parties. There are deep political differences between them too. Add to this mix the political differences between Iraq, Turkey and Iran, and you have a tangled web that turns deadly when the guns are brought in to play. Some of those guns are supplied by the United States who has its own agenda both with Iran and Turkey. In this case, a bunch of villagers don't rank all that high in the political scheme of things. In the eyes of governments, these folks aren't important enough to be protected. They are dispensible.

These 132 families (about 700 people) are part of more than 1 million villagers across the KRG border that have been displaced over these past 2 decades. In the western portion of the KRG, the government built collective townships for the IDPs. In some ways, this is no better than living in a collective prison. They have not been able to reclaim their lives and their livelihoods. They live in slums and have become dependent on government subsistence. They describe themselves as spiritually dead.

In the Dohuk area, the villagers have been displaced across a river into the collective towns. There were 5 bridges that connected them to the other side of the river where their land is. The bridges were blown up by Turkey in 2008. The bridges are a tangled, twisted, contorted mess of steel and concrete. Even so, some of the villagers are so desperate to just visit their homes that they risk climbing across the bridges. Their houses have long been destroyed, their livestock killed, and their orchards have deteriorated.

On the eastern side of the KRG, the government does not want to build collective towns. They don't want the villagers to become dependent on handouts. The KRG government wants them to go back to their villages. Yet they won't protect them and nor will they provide for them. Each displaced villager was supposed to receive a compensation stipend. They did, in fact, receive half of the stipend but the other half has been lost somewhere in the bureaucratic mess or maybe in some bureaucrat's pocket. This is yet to be determined.

There have been a few attempts at incentive programs to get the villagers to return home. For example, ICRC is currently building a hospital in one of the villages. The hospital will be accessible to 3-4 villages and the villagers will be offered employment. The government has pressured teachers to go back to the village schools in hopes of enticing families to return.

Yet 3 days ago, Iran shelled an area dangerously close to 4 of the villages. Turkey sent out surveillance planes before the shelling. Further indication that the 2 countries are working together. An already traumatized group of people were re traumatized. Luckily, nobody was killed or injured physically. Psychologically and spiritually, they were deeply injured. And, by the way, the teachers in one village left out of fear for their lives.

In the 2 years that I've known these villagers, they remained determined, tenacious and resourceful. When I saw them just after this this last shelling, they were in despair. For the first time in years, they are talking about abandoning their land. They want their government to compensate them for their losses and they are talking about starting their lives someplace else. For some, that may be in the town. Others are looking for different villages to live in. We've already been told that the likelihood of their government handing them compensation money is pretty slim. Frustrations are rising.

Last year, they described their homes as paradise. They had everything they needed to be physically, emotionally, and spiritually whole. They have dealt with displacement before, but it had never been sustained for such a long period of time.

They contributed greatly to their country both in what they produced and what they preserved. To see them in their current emotional state is heartbreaking. At this time, there is not much we can do except to hold their hands and walk through this depression with them. Maybe tomorrow their resolve will return.

In the meantime, CPT has completed a report about the human rights violations that these villagers have experienced. If anything, it will add to the body of information already out there that these villages were purposefully targeted. They were not collateral damage and they were not living in a no-mans land. We will be distributing the report to local government and international officials. I'll make the report available on my website and I'll let you know when it's posted. If you haven't already seen the website, please take a look at it. There's some pretty good videos of these folks. A picture is often worth a thousand words. 

Will it make a change? There was a saying a while back; “it takes a village to raise a child”. It will take a world to raise a village. We're not ready to abandon our village friends. We'll continue to do what we can to nurture the life back into them no matter where they choose to live. We will call on the international community to help with this process.

Peace,

Michele